That was when she’d heard the buzz of the text coming through. She’d turned her phone as discreetly as she could and glanced to see who it was, and it had almost slipped out of her hand. She read the text quickly and put her phone back in her bag.
“I do want to add that I believe in bars of soap,” she said. The three people at the table with her—one man, Ron, and one woman, Josie, who now were technically working under her, and the general manager of the imagined hotel, Stan—hadn’t said a word after her first comment. Now they were nodding. She was waiting for the pushback she usually got when she brought up this idea.
“What soap, though?” Josie asked. “I think that will be an important choice. Can that be local?”
“We’ll have to do some research,” Hannah said. “I want everything to be local if possible, but I never want to sacrifice quality to keep something local. If we can find a good locally produced soap, then yes, absolutely. Can you be in charge of that?”
“Sure,” Josie said, going on to talk about where exactly she planned to look.
Hannah was listening, she really was, but what she wanted at the moment was to text Reuben back. She liked this idea of a movie date with him. It seemed easy, no pressure, and if she was lucky, she might get to stay out later than ten o’clock.
“I plan to visit a few hotels in the area over the next few weeks,” Hannah said when there was a lull in the conversation. It was very possible she had missed something. She shook her head to refocus. “I’ll see how they do it, get some ideas.”
Again, everyone nodded. Now Josie asked the table about other nearby towns that might be known for soap. Hannah kept one ear out while she thought about what she would say to Reuben. Great! Or Is there a later show so I can help feed my kids? Or Is La La Land the only choice? That seemed somehow too . . . she wasn’t sure exactly what. Serious, maybe, or relationship focused, or romantic? A comedy might be better, or a thriller, but she didn’t know of any that were currently playing.
“Hannah?” Ron said.
“Oh yes, sorry,” she said. “I missed that last sentence.”
“No problem,” Ron said. “We were just talking about our definition of local, like, from how far away can something still be considered local? Does it have to come from within the city limits?”
“No,” she said quickly. “If we do that, we miss out on things from so many places—chocolates from Hershey and West Chester, beers from all around, meat from Chester County, fruit and vegetables from South Jersey. No, I think we have a wider scope.”
Again, they all nodded.
“How about this?” she said. “Let’s visit the space next week, though I know there isn’t much there but a shell. I also want to talk to the people designing the restaurant concept, because there might be some crossover. There’s a lot to be done before we even begin to make any decisions. I’ll be in touch later about our next meeting time.”
“Great,” Ron said, standing.
They said goodbye, and Hannah stood in the corner with her phone, reading and rereading Reuben’s text. Finally she texted back.
See you there!
“So I wanted to tell you: I’m going on a fourth date with someone, tomorrow,” Kim told Hannah. They were at Kim’s house, the kids playing in the next room. Light came in through the open curtains and blinds. Maybe things had gotten a little brighter overall for Kim lately.
“I know,” Hannah said. “You guys met on Bumble, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it might really be going someplace.”
“Really?” Hannah asked. “Tell me everything. Who is he? What’s his name? Where does he live?”
Kim looked at her, her eyes blank, and Hannah recoiled slightly, feeling she had somehow overstepped.
“Maybe later,” Kim said, gesturing toward the kids, but they weren’t listening to them. They were screaming and laughing.
“Okay, well, then I have to tell you something,” Hannah said, sitting up straighter and leaning closer to Kim. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while; I don’t know why I didn’t.” She stopped talking when the kids got quiet for a few seconds and waited. Of course she knew why she hadn’t. Kim would think this affair business was absolutely awful, despicable, really, and she just didn’t want to hear it. But at this point she almost didn’t care.
“I’ve also been dating,” she said. “This might sound crazy, but as a way to get over Joel’s betrayal, as a way to put this behind us and possibly move forward, I suggested—or more like threatened—I’d have my own affair. I figured, if he can do it, I can do it, right?” The more she told the story, the more convoluted it became, and she had a harder and harder time explaining why she was doing it.
Kim blinked at her. “What?” she finally said.
At that moment Lincoln ran into the room and threw himself on her lap.
“Mommy, Mommy, Savannah says her daddy isn’t living here anymore,” he said. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”
“Oh,” Hannah said, not prepared to deal with the question, for so many reasons. Also, she hoped that he had not heard a word she’d said to Kim. Now that it was just hanging there, she wished she could take it back, continue to keep it a secret.
“It’s true,” Kim said gently, and Hannah was relieved not to have to answer. “Sometimes mommies and daddies have fights, or misunderstandings, or just general disagreements, and they need time apart to figure it out.”
“So this is your time apart?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Kim said, like that answered it all, like he wasn’t going to have a million more questions.
“How long will your time apart last?” he asked, sitting up now, looking a little like a reporter conducting an interview at a courthouse. All he needed was a reporter’s notebook or a microphone.
“That’s a very good question,” Kim said noncommittally.
“Savannah said it will last for six months at the most, and then everything will go back to normal. Is that true?”
Kim looked at Hannah and back at Lincoln.
“It might be,” she said. “Possibly.”
“Good,” Lincoln said, easing himself up to standing. He ran back into the other room to rejoin the group.
“Is that what you guys are telling them?” Hannah asked. “That this is temporary?”
Kim looked like she was going to say something, but instead she started to cry. “I’m totally lying,” she said through her tears, clearly trying to keep her voice down so the kids wouldn’t hear.
“To the kids?”
“No, to you, to myself,” she said. “It’s true that I’ve been on a date with the same guy three times, but we haven’t done anything, and he doesn’t strike me as very smart. If I never saw him again, I wouldn’t mind. Hannah, it’s like the Wild West out there. It is not a pretty place.”
“You don’t have to see him again,” Hannah said, knowing, though, that Kim was also talking directly to her, responding to what she had just confessed. “Just say it isn’t working out for you.”
“But I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life,” she said miserably.
Hannah had to close her eyes. Kim had just voiced Hannah’s worst fear. A moment from her childhood popped into her mind. She and her mother had been driving to her grandparents’ in Tarrytown. On the highway, going by White Plains, they’d gotten a flat tire. Thank goodness they were in the right lane, her mother had said. Thank goodness they weren’t speeding, she’d said. Hannah had heard the tremor in her voice, the one she’d pretended wasn’t there. And while they’d waited for AAA to come help them, since her mother didn’t know how to change a tire, Hannah had had that same feeling—it was just them. There was no safety net. She shook the image away.
“There’s something else,” Kim said. “I know Hank has been dating.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, he told me, but here is the craziest thing ever, or the worst thing. I saw him on Bumble,
so he must have seen me too. I mean, I swiped left, of course—could you imagine if I swiped right and he didn’t? I’ve seen him on other sites, too, but I got off all of those right away. I figured Bumble was okay since the woman has to make the first move, so that would always be in my court, not his. But I’m not interested in any of the guys on the site. Now I wish I could see the other women to see who he might be connecting with.”
“But he’s dating? Like, seeing the same person for a while?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kim said quietly, almost whispering. “All I know is that he’s been on the dating sites. He’s putting himself out there. He’s trying.” She leaned in and said, “But now something he said makes sense—oh my God, I thought he was crazy! I told him he was losing it! I asked him how long he’d been on when he dropped the kids off this morning, and he told me a little under a month, which seems reasonable, really; I deserve that. But he also told me—and I was so sure it was some sort of mistake—that he saw you on the site. I mean, it was the most he talked to me in a while, and I realized how much I missed him, not just the idea of him and the support of him and the togetherness of having him here, but him—I just purely missed talking to him. He came in and sat down and asked what I knew about you being on the site. I told him there was no way, but I also told him about you and Joel and the affair and . . .” She trailed off.
“Well, he was right,” Hannah said matter-of-factly. “He saw me there.”
“Did you see him?”
Hannah had seen Hank. In a frenzied moment of swiping left over and over again, his face had come up, and then it was gone. Afterward she had wondered, Did I really see that?
“I think I did,” Hannah said quietly. “I know I did. I swiped left so fast that afterward I wondered if I had imagined it. But now that you say he was on, I guess I really did see him.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Kim asked. Hannah could almost feel something shift between them. In a million years she never would have imagined that her heartbreak would mesh with Kim’s heartbreak.
“I, well, I didn’t want to tell you I thought I’d seen him. What if I’d been wrong?” Hannah said. “I wished I could go back and make sure, but you can’t do that; once you swipe, you swipe.”
“You can shake your phone,” Kim said, her voice sounding strange. “You can shake it and bring it back.”
“I tried,” Hannah said. “But by the time I realized what had happened, or what I thought had happened, I was already three beyond. I couldn’t go back.”
“Mom?” Savannah called from the next room.
Hannah watched as Kim cleared her throat and straightened up. “Yes?” she called back.
“Can you make pizza rolls?”
“Sure!”
She got up and preheated the oven, grabbed a bag out of the freezer, and arranged the frozen rectangles on a tray. Kim pushed the tray into the oven, not waiting for it to fully preheat, and came back to the couch, but she didn’t sit. She just stood there.
“I told you,” she said, barely opening her mouth to let the words out. “That you should make it work with Joel, that you shouldn’t throw away your marriage and your family. Did you not listen to a thing I said?”
“I heard you,” Hannah said, feeling defensive. “But we all have to make our own choices, right? I mean, you didn’t listen to me when I worried you were wondering about Wesley too much, did you? I’d say you’re guilty of the pot calling the kettle black.”
They stared at each other, Hannah’s heart beating fast, the growing smell of the pizza rolls making her feel slightly nauseated.
“You should go,” Kim said.
Despite the state of their current interaction, Hannah was surprised. She’d thought they would fight and get through it. She didn’t want to leave.
“No, we can—” Hannah said.
“You should go,” Kim said again, interrupting her.
“Kids, we have to go,” Hannah called.
“No,” they all cried. “We’re starving.”
They appeared in the doorway, taking up the whole frame, their little hopeful faces looking at them. If it had been another time, Hannah would have snapped a picture, and she was sure it would have been one of those photos that you passed around and reposted on birthdays and at various graduations, but she knew she would not want to remember this moment.
“I’ll take you to McDonald’s,” she said, knowing they would agree and also knowing it was a dig at Kim, who, to her children’s dismay, had put into place a family boycott of McDonald’s years ago after she’d read some article or other. So there, Hannah thought as she gathered her things and walked to the door. The kids dutifully followed, talking quietly about hamburgers and Chicken McNuggets and caramel sundaes.
Once they were in the car, Hannah looked back at Kim’s door. Normally she would wait there and wave until they drove away. But the door was already closed. Hannah pulled out her phone and deactivated her account on Bumble. She put it back in her bag, tried to shake off her anger before she started to drive, and decided to go to the better McDonald’s on Oregon Avenue. Maybe she would even take the kids for a quick visit to see Richard. She wouldn’t mind having a chance to say hi to Reuben—at this point, as far as she could tell, he was the easiest person to be around.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Mommy?” Lincoln called up the stairs. “Can you come read to us, please?”
Hannah was lying on her bed, thinking about calling Kim, who, for the record, had not called all day to wish her a happy birthday. She had the clear and heavy sense that all of her usual and dependable human connections had come undone in the last few months. She was sure each one must have a mystery antidote to set things right, but she just couldn’t figure out how to conjure it up. She knew now that she should have told Kim right away about seeing Hank on Bumble; she regretted not telling her immediately, but surely Kim was going to come around. Surely they would find their way back to each other.
“Mommy?” Lincoln called again.
She sighed. Really all she wanted to do was stay in her room and let the rest of her birthday go by. She wanted to call down and say that their birthday present to her—there had been very little this year except for a few still-wet glitter cards—could be to just give her some needed time alone. But she didn’t think it was worth it. That would just make the time go by even slower, waiting as they tiptoed around her because, she knew, they would agree to it.
“Coming,” she called.
She ducked into Lincoln’s room and grabbed the book they were in the middle of, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and headed downstairs.
“Happy birthday to you . . .” The singing began before she hit the bottom step. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Mommy. Happy birthday to you.”
She stopped short. She had thought she smelled something baking, but she was so disconnected from the activities in her own house these days that it hadn’t even occurred to her to see what it was. The kids sat at the table, smiling so big, with Stinker and Dune propped up on the corner of the table and Joel in the middle hunched over a cake—the usual cake—white frosting and sprinkles, a one-layer rectangle. Just the way he always did. And she would have bet money, she would have bet anything, that inside was chocolate cake, her favorite.
“Whoa,” she said. “I was not expecting this.”
“But Mommy, we give you a cake every year,” Lincoln correctly pointed out.
“Mommy, come sit,” Ridley said.
She walked to the table and took her seat. Joel came around to her and first touched her on the shoulder, then leaned down and touched his nose to the top of her head. It wasn’t a kiss, really—it was more of a sniff. She closed her eyes for the briefest moment before moving her head just enough to let him know she wanted him to move, which he did right away.
“Birthday cake, check!” Joel said as he did every single year. “Number fourteen and counting.”
That was her cue to say, �
��Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” in an extremely overexaggerated way, as she always did, their running joke. The kids loved it. But she couldn’t do it.
“Mommy, now you say, Thank you, mister,” Lincoln prompted her after a few seconds had gone by and they were just sitting there, not doing or saying anything. It was like they couldn’t move forward until she said it. This was their play, and that was the next line.
“It’s okay,” Joel said. “Mommy can switch it up a little. She is overwhelmed and rendered speechless.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Lincoln said. “But can you not be speechless? Please?”
When he said the word speechless, it sounded like speaches.
“Yes, of course I can not be speechless,” she said, leaning over and hugging Lincoln. “This cake is so great, so delicious looking. I declare that it is okay to eat it before dinner!”
“Yay!” they cheered, even though she knew that was their plan anyway, whether she said it or not. Again, that was part of the tradition, more lines in their play.
Joel pulled plates and napkins out of a drawer where he must have been hiding them, and she was secretly touched to see they were unicorn themed—another favorite of hers. These weren’t left over from someone else’s birthday; she knew that since they were a new design still in their wrapping. He must have either ordered them or gone to the party store. And it wasn’t like he was being extra nice this year because of what he’d done; he was nice every year on her birthday. Every single year.
When Joel had called Hannah’s mother to ask for permission to propose, her mother had been thrilled. Her one request—really, now that Hannah thought about it, she realized her mom should have reached higher, maybe requested that Joel remain faithful—was that Joel bake a birthday cake for Hannah every year and sing to her. “Everyone should be sung to on their birthday,” her mother always said, and she joined in if they were at a restaurant and a celebration was taking place at a nearby table. She’d also bring their elderly neighbors and relatives who lived alone cupcakes and candles, and she would stay to sing and encourage the traditional wish making.
Beside Herself Page 19
